Joel Snyder is an internationally known expert in the area of telecommunications and networks, with an emphasis on security. His thesis, from the University of Arizona's Department of Management Information Systems, analyzed the development, use, and technologies of computer networks in the former Soviet Union. He is currently a Senior Partner at Opus One, a consulting firm, in Tucson, Arizona.
As a consultant with over two decades of experience, Snyder has written compilers, data management applications, conferencing systems, VLSI layout applications, firewalls, and network software; designed and implemented information systems for clients as small as a two-person brokerage house and as large as NASA; built network systems for clients on six continents; assisted software and hardware vendors in design, review, architecture, development, and testing of products; and served on ANSI, IEEE, ISO, and CCITT working groups developing telecommunications standards.
Snyder has also held full-time positions with CompuServe, Inc. (at their Research and Development Center) and with the University of Arizona (in the College of Business).
Snyder's clients include organizations throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia, including Apple, AT&T, Australian Broadcasting Company, Cisco, Citibank, Daimler-Benz, Fidelity Investments, Hoffman-La Roche, Honeywell, Juniper, MCI, Motorola, Nokia, Schlumberger, State of California, the Swiss Stock Exchange, the UN, Visa, Xerox, the White House, and World Bank.
As an author and trainer, Snyder has given keynote speeches at conferences in the US, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia, and throughout the former Soviet republics. He has presented training seminars to many clients, including both private and public agencies.
Snyder has written hundreds of articles, has been published in over a dozen different journals and industry magazines in the US, UK, Russia, Germany, Australia, Portugal, Denmark, Japan, Spain, Italy, and France. His product testing work in network and telecommunications products is well known and respected in the field, and his published reviews have received several awards for editorial excellence.
Dr. Snyder has also written three books and edited two journals.
Recent tests and articles by Joel Snyder:
Exchange 2010: Better scalability and control for administrators Apr. 15, 2009 While Exchange 2007 introduced a plethora of reliability and scalability features, Exchange 2010 helps to clean up what was really a confusing set of options. E-mail managers looking for guidance on building distributed ...
Exchange 2010: Webmail features on par with Outlook Apr. 15, 2009 End-users accustomed to Web-based access to the personal e-mail through free Internet services such as Google's Gmail, expect the same power and access through a browser for their business e-mail. Exchange 2010 stands ...
Exchange 2010 beta sneak peek-test Apr. 15, 2009 The first public beta of Microsoft's next version of Exchange, due out in the second half of this year, hits the streets today. Microsoft gave us early access and we had 10 days to put it through its paces in a VMware ...
CommuniGate Pro is speed king Mar. 09, 2009 In this evaluation, we quickly found that modern hardware — even within the VMware and SAN environment — offers very good performance for these messaging servers. Our performance tests stress the mail servers far beyond ...
Exchange alternatives: Pros and cons Mar. 09, 2009 With the release of Exchange 2007, Microsoft opened the door for some substantial competition. The upgrade costs, hardware requirements, and hassles of jumping to the latest version have many businesses asking, is ...
ALT-N's MDaemon offers easiest management Mar. 09, 2009 Management of a midsized e-mail system can be complicated. System performance has to be monitored to ensure reasonable response time for end users. Protocol engines, such as SMTP, POP and IMAP, have a host of ...
Kerio is tops for Mac support Mar. 09, 2009 With Outlook users taken care of in one manner or the other, we wondered how each of these products would deal with Macintosh users.
Zimbra offers elegant mobility links Mar. 09, 2009 We believe that compatibility with Microsoft Outlook is critical for any product in this marketplace. We also believe that most businesses will want a mobility solution, especially one based on Microsoft ActiveSync, for ...
MDaemon v10 Mar. 09, 2009 As an SMTP receiver, MDaemon has as many features in the areas of security, SMTP transaction control and message routing. And, we were totally blown away at the level of visibility into message flow through the system ...
Extended features stand out Mar. 09, 2009 Each product tested offers features beyond basic e-mail. For example, Zimbra Collaboration Suite and MDaemon both have integrated instant messaging servers, and MailSite Fusion has a short message service gateway. But ...
How we tested the Exchange alternatives Mar. 09, 2009 We invited 13 mail server vendors to participate in this test, and announced our test through the Internet Mail Consortium, an industry group of mail vendors and users.
Kerio MailServer v6.6.2 Mar. 09, 2009 We found Kerio MailServer to be a great product, well-matched to this market. While the lack of scalability and technical support style will limit Kerio deployments to midsize enterprises with less than 1,000 mailboxes, ...
CommuniGate Pro Internet Communications Platform v5.2.9 Mar. 09, 2009 CommuniGate Pro, the company's flagship e-mail server, has evolved over the years into a modern messaging server with a focus on performance and scalability.
MailSite Fusion v9 Mar. 09, 2009 MailSite Fusion provides basic mail service on Windows platforms. We found several glitches with Windows 2008 support, and were also disappointed that it doesn't have a MAPI connector for Microsoft Outlook.
Installation easier on Unix servers Mar. 09, 2009 We installed each product according to the manufacturer's directions. Where both Unix and Windows were supported as the base server operating system, we chose to use RedHat Linux 5 (RHEL5). If the product only supported ...
Finding the best of the basic messaging feature sets Mar. 09, 2009 The set of basic features that comprise a business e-mail server today are simple e-mail access and full support for multiple delivery protocols, including SMTP, POP and IMAP. Additionally, because Exchange also ...
Exchange: Should I stay or should I go? Mar. 09, 2009 So, in light of the pros and cons of the alternatives laid out in this test, should I keep going with Exchange, or should I switch?
Manageability problems Feb. 23, 2009 Our woes with Network and Security Manager began when we tried to use it to manage the SRX 5800. With eight years of experience using NSM in Opus One's labs, we were looking forward to the unification of JunOS and ...
How we tested Juniper's SRX 5800 Feb. 23, 2009 We assessed the Juniper SRX 5800 in terms of performance, features and usability. Because the product is marketed as a security appliance, our tests focused on security performance. We did not look at router metrics, ...
Juniper SRX 5800: Biggest firewall ever Feb. 23, 2009 If the Guinness Book of World Records had an entry for "biggest firewall ever," Juniper's new SRX 5800 would certainly qualify.
Is Palo Alto's firewall a firewall or not? Aug. 11, 2008 Palo Alto Networks has no illusions that a product on the market less than a year is going to have the feature set and depth that enterprise competitors Check Point, Cisco, and Juniper are offering. And, since most of ...
Internet radio appliances roundup Aug. 11, 2008 Web-based applications and products like Apple's iTunes have made it easy to turn a laptop or a desktop into a music player. At the same time, thousands of radio stations are re-broadcasting their audio over the ...
![[Snyder pic]](/gif/2002/JoelSnyder.gif)
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